Trending Topics: What is your biggest takeaway from the 2026 NBA Finals?

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Steve Aschburner

The league might be able to wring one more year out of its quirky parity streak of eight different franchises winning championships in the past eight years. The math is getting dicey and the probability greater that one of these eight recent champs since 2019 will find its way back to a second Larry O’Brien Trophy. But from what Victor Wembanyama and his San Antonio teammates and coaches showed across four rounds of the playoffs, they would be an easy favorite if you were picking the group most likely to be the ninth.

The Spurs showed up a little early in their life cycle for the Finals. They got stuck against a Knicks team that got blistering hot at precisely the right time. But the lessons they absorbed along the way against Portland, Minnesota, especially OKC and New York will stoke Wembanyama’s and the other players’ summers and be on display from the start in 2026-27. The trophy is going to keep traveling.

Brian Martin

Jalen Brunson is undeniable. It doesn’t matter that he’s undersized. It doesn’t matter that he’s a second-round pick. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t get a contract extension from Dallas. It doesn’t matter that his signing with New York received mixed reactions. Brunson has forever silenced his doubters and his critics by leading the Knicks to their first championship in 53 years.

And he capped it off with a performance matched only by the great Michael Jordan, scoring 45 points on the road in a Finals-clinching game. That included a stretch of 13 straight Knicks points in the fourth quarter, a personal 13-2 run that gave New York its first lead since the score was 5-4 in the first quarter. Once again, New York had overcome a double-digit deficit, and once again, it was Brunson leading the charge. After the final buzzer sounded, Brunson was the unanimous choice for Finals MVP after averaging 32.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.6 assists in the series. His selection was … undeniable.

Shaun Powell

The Spurs couldn’t keep a lead. This will serve as the historical footnote of the series after Jalen Brunson’s sheer will to win. The Spurs led by double-digits every game and held the lead for roughly 70% of the series … and only won one game. That’s almost unfathomable, simply from the standpoint of basketball logic. The knee jerk will give them a pass because of their youth – but youth wasn’t an issue in the seven-game Western Conference Finals against the defending champs. If the Spurs don’t return to The Finals for a spell, they might rue this first experience and how they let it slip away.

John Schuhmann

It’s important to be comfortable being uncomfortable. This was an incredibly competitive series, the first Finals in the 30 years for which we have play-by-play data where every game was within five points in the last five minutes. And it was closer than that, because all five were within two points in the last two minutes.

In gut-check time, the Spurs just weren’t comfortable, making both mental and physical mistakes. The Knicks, however, knew exactly what they were doing. Jalen Brunson had the ball in his hands (he had an incredible clutch usage rate of 53.3% in the series) he was going to determine where it was going, and it didn’t matter if he had a 7-foot-4 guy in front of him.

Even before they got to clutch time, the Knicks had to be comfortable climbing out of big holes. They became just the second team in these 30 years of play-by-play data to win four games they trailed by double-digits in a single playoff series, joining … the 2023-24 Knicks (in the first round vs. Philadelphia). Whether they were down 12 or 29, they knew they could win, seemingly having a huge mental edge over their opponent.

Jeff Zillgitt

It’s best to start with Victor Wembanyama’s assessment of the NBA Finals:

“The margin of error is very, very thin. Our domination stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this,” Wembanyama said.

He nailed it. The Knicks weren’t perfect, and part of that was because of the Spurs. But when the Knicks absolutely needed a stop or a bucket, more often than not, they got one and took advantage of the Spurs’ compounding mistakes. That’s why the Knicks are the 2025-26 NBA champions.

In the Finals – and throughout the playoffs – the Knicks understood the value of making every possession count as much as possible. They played with remarkable focus, and it was enjoyable to watch. Even when the Knicks trailed the Spurs 83-73 with less than eight minutes to play in Game 5, the sense that the Knicks were just a few back-and-forth possessions from making it a one-possession game was palpable. And it all starts with Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, one of the best and most mentally tough players in the league.